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Monday, June 14, 2010

I Want It All, and All

Last week, I was recovering from HHR and worked overtime. The overtime served as running prevention since I was not sore from the race but some tendons in my foot were causing me a good amount of pain. When I walked it felt like there were cotton balls being shredded in my foot, except the cotton balls were on fire-catch my drift? Not wanting to make whatever it was worse, I refrained from running and only did some light walking.

Friday evening, Goliath and I had a date with a creek and a trail and 90% humidity. There was a jazz festival taking place alongside the trail, so there were hundreds of people in lawn chairs and picnics. Somebody desperately wanted to have a meet-greet-and eat, he tugged in a direction opposite of the norm: sideways, not forward. We walked about a mile and a half to our "spot," you know the place. The mini-waterfall, the ducks and slabs of concrete. Unlike every trip there, I decided it was my turn to test the waters. I slipped off my lunarglides, and tiptoed into the frigid rushing creek.

The water felt uh-ma-ZING. I had to control myself from just jumping all the way in, the humidity was out of control and even though we had only walked sweat was pouring down my face and chest. Goliath batted at my toes peeking up, I think he wanted me to swim with him. That is until he saw some mallards. You know what's next right?

He was off, but not in the speedy running prey-drive sense. He was off, in the swimming-for-my-life-dog-paddle-as-fast-as-I can sense. He was also off in the "hey, I'm the most subborn dog alive and am gonna pretend not to hear you." Usually, when Goliath nears the ducks they fly away, and he swims back. This time, unlike every other time, they just kept swimming. They swam, so he swam. Mind you, I was hollering for him incessantly and then he swam the bend and was completely out of sight.

Shoeless and panicked, I darted off after him along the trail. The trail intersects the creek again in a few hundred meters and I knew I'd beat him there, but by the time I got there the ducks had arrived but my precious pup was no where to be seen. Fearing he'd drowned, I ran down a steep embankment completely barefoot only to see he had swam back to our slabs, and was guarding my shoes and cell phone.